About Enigma 23

The 23 enig­ma refers to the belief that most inci­dents and events are direct­ly con­nect­ed to the num­ber 23, some mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the num­ber 23, or a num­ber relat­ed to the num­ber 23.

Why the number 23?

At some point in the past, whilst think­ing about game design, read­ing about aug­ment­ed games/ reality/ announce­ments (Por­tal 2’s announce­ment), I came across the 23 enig­ma. At this point I start­ed to form the plan of includ­ing hid­den ref­er­ences to the num­ber 23 in any games I work on, and then watched ‘The Num­ber 23′, with Jim Car­rey, which spurred me on to keep this idea and devel­op it fur­ther.

Dur­ing the devel­op­ment of my games, any oppor­tu­ni­ty that appears to have a hid­den 23 (or ref­er­ence to) with­in the game, I will be adding it — as long as it doesn’t break the game or expe­ri­ence in any­way. The feel­ing of the hid­den 23’s must not feel con­trived or inex­plic­a­ble to the game world.

Whilst I make this infor­ma­tion pub­lic now, I would pre­fer to make it hid­den, so as to force peo­ple to find out about this on their own. So if/when any of my games become suc­cess­ful, this page will be tak­en down, in attempt to make the mys­tery last longer.

Design Guidelines

To hide the num­ber 23, some mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the num­ber 23, or a num­ber relat­ed to the num­ber 23 through­out all titles devel­oped by ‘Enig­ma 23’

Rules

Game name must have a sum which equals 23

OR

Game name must have a ref­er­ence to 23

Incor­po­rate 23 into the game logo

23 ini­tial achieve­ments

23 ranks/ lev­els (if game includes a lev­el­ling sys­tem)

Release date with a sum that equals 23

Enigma 23 Logo

When cre­at­ing the logo for ‘Enig­ma 23’, I want­ed it to have a ref­er­ence to the num­ber 23, and be easy enough to be used in dif­fer­ent styles. Vana­di­um has the atom­ic num­ber of 23, and the atom­ic sym­bol is drawn as 4 cir­cles with 23 atoms placed around them.